The other day this spiritual woman told me that my work contained the essense of the subject rather than the subject containing the essense of the work, sounded good. I love hearing what people like and how they interpret my stuff and we talked more and she said that my flowery figurative pieces were reminiscent of an Ayahuasca journey. I asked her about Ayahuasca and she said that it was forbidden to discuss with others. Maybe not forbidden but personal, no problem, mum's the word! After talking with her I was inspired to make this piece, I drank a few cups of coffee before I started.

Here are a few new illustrated DVD covers for the good folks at Lynda.com. Are there any other educators out there using Blackboard 9? I am getting up to speed with the program and migrating all class handouts and assignments to Blackboard. Actually, I haven't started yet but I'll figure it out by tomorrow afternoon.

The sea is very clear and the bottom becomes fantastic with hurrying, fighting, feeding, breeding animals. Crabs rush from frond to frond of the waving algae. Starfish squat over mussels and limpets, attach their million little suckers and then slowly lift with incredible power until the prey is broken from the rock. And then the starfish stomach comes out and envelops its food. Orange and speckled and fluted nudibranchs slide gracefully over the rocks, their skirts waving like the dresses of Spanish dancers. And black eels poke their heads out of crevices and wait for prey. . . . A wave breaks over the barrier, and churns the glassy water for a moment and mixes bubbles into the pool, and then it clears and is tranquil and lovely and murderous again.
Cannery Row, John Steinbeck

I fell in love with sea creatures through my families many childhood camping trips along the west coast beaches and the sea of cortez. It was the tide pools that did it for me, micro worlds of strange and fantastic sea creatures. My brothers and I would sit, watch and explore until the next tide came in. That was then and this is now.

When the BP oil spill disaster hit it was so upsetting and then I heard on the radio that endangered sea turtles were being burned alive in oil slicks in an effort by BP to minimize the uncontrollable surface oil. This event was just too much so I created 2 personal pieces in response.

Sea Turtle 1 | Monotype | 12"x15"

A week or so after I posted my work to Drawger I was contacted by the Sea Turtle Restoration Project and they invited me to be a featured artist at an upcoming art show and auction titled, Save Them All. This invitation was a honor and I created these new Monotypes for the show. If you are in San Francisco Saturday August 14th please come by for music, food and art. I will have a space selling original work. Funds raised will help the Sea Turtle Restoration Project (STRP) restore endangered habitat destroyed by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This event is sponsored by Deutsch Design Works.

Sea Turtle 2 | Monotype | 12"x15"

BP is currently spending millions on their PR effort with one task changing the name of the spill from, "The BP Oil Spill" to, "The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill"

Sea Turtle 3 | Monotype | 12"x15"

The Gulf of Mexico supports an estimated 1,000 functioning oil rigs and an uncounted thousands of abandoned rigs.

This was an assignment for Brown Alumni Magazine. The story was about a hair-raising day of combat in Afghanistan from the perspective of a military doctor and Brown Alum. This doctor worked in the Helmand Province and the Now Zad District Center and I used Google Image search to view the area of combat and it is not pretty, I really feel for our armed forces and their families. Titled, "Through the Fog" this story describes the emotional experience of “The fog of war” which is a phenomenon unique to armed conflict. It is the intangible force that encompasses the uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity of war. I worked with Design Director Lisa Sergi who commented after receiving my sketches, "Push it further, you can go abstract". How often do you hear, "Push it further" ? Thank you, Lisa!